Today’s is a fun one: We talk sports. Specifically, which sport is best. We tackle it March Madness style, with a single-elimination bracket in the style of Dan and Rob’s old podcast, which alien fighter is best.

Highlight: When you mentioned me. And a second highlight: “I don’t know, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time watching fishing on youtube.” – Abinadi

Lowlight: When you picked soccer over basketball. I respect soccer a lot, and they’re very similar in a lot of ways, but basketball is more complex, and requires more skill which to me gives it the edge. (I did appreciate that you didn’t pretend basketball vs. baseball was a hard decision though.)

Who is right, and who is wrong? Tom’s weird, weird love of cheerleading makes him wrong and Abinadi right. I’ll give you cheerleading over fishing, but that it was even considered up for discussion against hockey is crazy.

Great podcast.

ps. I’ve never played racquetball before and I really want to. We should play sometime.

Football versus rugby is definitely a difficult choice, and I think you came down the right way. I think rugby has more in common with soccer than football though. Both are very fun to watch, though I don’t think I could handle playing rugby.

I finally became curious enough about the scoring system of tennis that I looked it up. According to wikipedia, no one knows for sure. Either:

“It is possible that a clock face was used on court, with a quarter move of the hand to indicate a score of 15, 30, and 45. When the hand moved to 60, the game was over. However, in order to ensure that the game could not be won by a one-point difference in players’ scores, the idea of “deuce” was introduced. To make the score stay within the “60” ticks on the clock face, the 45 was changed to 40. Therefore, if both players have 40, the first player to score receives ten and that moves the clock to 50. If the player scores a second time before the opponent is able to score, they are awarded another ten and the clock moves to 60. The 60 signifies the end of the game. However, if a player fails to score twice in a row, then the clock would move back to 40 to establish another “deuce”.”

or:

“Another theory is that the scoring nomenclature came from the French game jeu de paume (a precursor to tennis which initially used the hand instead of a racquet). Jeu de paume was very popular before the French revolution, with more than 1,000 courts in Paris alone. The traditional court was 90 ft in total with 45 ft on each side. When the server scored, he moved forward 15 ft. If he scored again, he would move another 15 ft. If he scored a third time, he could only move 10 ft closer.”

But it doesn’t matter, because tennis is horrible.

I found it really odd that the two sports you guys regularly play/played ended up in the finals… It’s almost like there was some emotional bias going on or something.

Football is popular because of the pace breaks! Bursts of intense action, time to get a drink, talk between plays, restroom breaks. And all of this is played up to the highest degree by advertisers so they can get their precious commercial time in.

Final thoughts: Cheerleading versus hockey is not even fit to be asked as a serious question. Hockey is so fun to watch, even if you have no clue what is happening. Guys getting smashed, puck flying around at 100 miles an hour, fights for no reason. That is real sport.

Tom, why haven’t we had Ross on the podcast yet? Clearly, that needs to happen.

Ross, thanks for looking that up on wikipedia. Nice bit of research. As to the bias… it is true. It cannot be either denied or helped. We stipulated at the beginning that the decision was based on two factors: 1. how fun the sport was to watch, and 2. how fun the sport was to play. Both of these criteria are subjective, so our innate biases are inevitable. Luckily, our opinion that put ultimate frisbee as the winner is scientifically correct.

Highlights:
* Abinadi, married for 10 minutes, doing the old married man routine.
* Tom cheerleading…or rather, trying out for cheerleading…or rather, intending to try out for cheerleading…or rather, throwing someone in the air once.
* The fish fight.
* Tom: “…wearing gross shoes in a place I hate on company time.”
* The fact that Molly wrote an ode about Nathalie’s ultimate frisbee move.

Lowlights:
* Neither one of you seems to know anything about sports.

Who is right: if I must choose, I choose whoever picked the picture for this blog entry.

Highlight: Finding out that Tom likes college football and has been to a game.

Lowlight: 1) The utter disappointment that Abinadi has not been to a college football game. What is wrong with you?!
2) The fact that Fishing and Cheerleading even made this discussion.
3) Skiing? Skiing is awesome, and had you two ever been, you would be singing it’s praises! It would also give you much more appreciation when watching it on TV.

Ultimate Frisbee? If you throw in the danger element of reptiles, then I agree!

Yes, it is true that I have never been to a college football game. Yes, it is true that, as a rule, I don’t enjoy watching it. I do watch the super bowl, depending on the year…

I like playing football. I think it is a really fun sport. I have only ever played with friends, and I am no good at it, but it is still great, no questions asked. At the end of the day, though, I’d take ultimate over a game of football any day of the week.

Highlight: 1) Racquetball beats football! I love that this happened. I love that this happened in Texas.
2) Tom comparing himself to a three-year-old. Tom – I wasn’t sure if we’d ever agree on anything but now we can. 😉
3) I love Ultimate.
Lowlight: Tennis is super fun, and it’s not its fault that you can’t hit the ball where you want to. Go Mallory!

Who is right, and who is wrong? Tom is right. His unwavering support of Ultimate makes him so. Also, I can’t backup Abinadi’s enthusiasm for fishing. Let the fish be!

Highlights: My being mentioned quite a few times. It seems I do know much more about sports than either of you, as you proved with this podcast.

I am smart Abinadi, you didn’t have to say that.

Lowlight: Soccer not being picked over Ultimate. Abinadi, I am with you there. It is a hard choice but I would have picked soccer over ultimate. I play it often and even play it if I didn’t keep getting hurt, really hurt when I played with much bigger guys. Also, Ethan, soccer totally beats basketball. I do not think there is less skill in soccer than in basketball. I cannot play basketball because I have never tried-I was always too short. There is a finesse to soccer, but both have drama queens that I could do without.

Who won: I don’t know. Fishing over cheerleading-Abinadi can’t win. Cheerleading over hockey-no way, Tom can’t win either. I think I am the winner of this podcast, you’re welcome.

Also, I have been to some UT baseball games and they are fun. After having gone to those, I even ventured to watch some on TV, it was enjoyable. It isn’t as exciting as some others to watch, but it is fun to watch once you have figured out some of the strategy of it all. But it doesn’t compare to basketball so I will take it losing.

Highlights: Hearing Abinadi say “That’s not what you’re watching.” in regards to cheerleading. Dude, you’re a married man now. You gotta watch admissions like that.
Abinadi: “Blood bouncing on the ice.” It’s all part of the game. Tom, I’ll name one person who both enjoys and has played hockey. Me. That that is from a good ole Texas boy.

Lowlights: The complete absence of any shoot sports at all. I don’t care if it is Skeet/Trap, competition shooting, archery, Airsoft, paintball or a backyard shoot out with slingshots. I would go out shooting before any of these other sports.

After all, anything target related is the original sport. When Adam was hanging with his sons (or caveman with his cavesons if you prefer), he didn’t say “I bet I can inflate this cow’s stomach and toss it into your mom’s best basket more times than you”. He picked up a rock or stick and said “I bet I can hit that pumpkin more times”. Eventually it got too easy, so they had to invent ways to get the rock or stick go further, thus began the first arms race. Besides, all that training for competition made it easier to go out and get some food. If you think long enough, you can figure out how any modern day sport goes all the way back to throwing something at a target for survival.

The title of the podcast should instead be “Abinadi and Tom’s favorite sport to play and watch” not “Best Sport”. The results speak for themselves. I could live with soccer winning it all even though I disagree. Basketball beats soccer because more appendages are fully utilized and it is awesome seeing really huge people perform as athletically and skillfully as they do i.e. LeBron James. The finals should have been basketball vs football which is tough, but basketball wins because you don’t die.

I was entertained, however. Now I know Tom’s favorite sports are ultimate, racquetball and cheerleading – sounds about right.